Integrating Ego, Homophily, and Structural Factors to Measure User Influence in Online Community
Integrating Ego, Homophily, and Structural Factors to Measure User Influence in Online Community
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整合自我、同质性和结构因素来衡量在线社区中的用户影响力
DOI：
10.1109/tpc.2017.2703038
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发表时间：
2017
影响因子：
1.7
通讯作者：
Zhang Cheng
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Zhang Chenghong;Lu Tian;Chen Shoucong;Zhang Cheng
研究问题：在当前的信息时代，人们越来越习惯于在网上分享他们的特殊兴趣，并受到从这种分享中发展起来的关系的影响。本研究的目的是更好地衡量这些在线社区的同伴影响力。研究问题：1.如何在网络社区中的同伴影响力的方式，全面结合同伴为基础的特征，同质性效应，和用户在网络中的结构位置进行测量？2.本研究提出的方法是否上级现有的其他方法？文献综述：以往关于测量在线用户影响力的文献可以分为两大类：1。那些专注于社交媒体玩家的内在特征来衡量同伴影响力的人; 2。那些解决社会网络结构。相关的计算算法包括Topic-Based PageRank、Quality-Structure Index等，虽然第一流考虑了焦点节点的内在特征，但它忽略了节点之间的相似性和知识差异的吸引力。第二种主要强调社交网络的结构来衡量网络范围内的同伴影响力，但低估了同伴间吸引力的影响，这种吸引力可能会影响同伴影响力在网络中的每一个扩散步骤。为了填补这一研究空白，本研究提出了一种新的方法来衡量网络用户的影响力，包括同行的内在因素，同行之间的影响因素，同质性效应，和网络结构。同质性是指相互作用的个体在某些属性方面的相似程度。方法学：从通信发送者-接收者的角度来看，我们开发了一种可计算的方法，该方法结合了基于对等的特征，同质性效应和用户在网络中的结构位置来衡量社交网络用户的影响力。随后在基于社会网络服务的在线社区和在线专业物流社区进行了两项实证研究，以验证所提出的方法的有效性。结果与结论：实验结果表明，我们提出的方法提供了更高的预测精度的用户影响力排名在一个在线社区比其他现有的方法。这些发现奠定了基础，为未来的理论探索，并提供了一个有用的工具，针对有影响力的用户在网络社区，如博客，公告板系统，和论坛。
Research problem: In the current information age, people are increasingly accustomed to sharing their special interests online and are influenced by the relationships developed from that sharing. The purpose of this study was to better measure peer influence in these online communities. Research questions: 1. How can peer influence in online communities be measured in a way that comprehensively incorporates peer-based characteristics, the homophily effect, and the structural position of a user in the network? 2. Is the method proposed in this study superior to other existing methods? Literature review: Previous literature on measuring online user influence can be classified into two streams: 1. Those that focus on the intrinsic characteristics of social media players to measure peer influence; 2. Those that address social network structure. Relevant computing algorithms include Topic-Based PageRank, Quality-Structure index, and so on. Although the first stream considers a focal peer's intrinsic characteristics, it overlooks the interpeer attraction in terms of similarity and discrepant knowledge among peers. The second stream mostly stresses the structures of social networks to measure network-wide peer influence but underestimates the effect of interpeer attraction that may leverage every diffusion step of peer influence through the network. To fill this research gap, this study proposes a new method of measuring network user influence that incorporates peers’ intrinsic factors, interpeer influence factors as homophily effect, and network structure. Homophily refers to the degree to which pairs of individuals who interact are similar with respect to certain attributes. Methodology: From the communication sender–receiver perspective, we developed a computable method that incorporates peer-based characteristics, the homophily effect, and the structural position of a user in the network to measure the social network user influence. Two empirical studies were subsequently conducted in a social network service-based online community and an online professional logistics community to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Results and conclusions: The empirical results show that our proposed method provides higher prediction accuracy of user influence rank in an online community than the other existing methods. These findings lay a foundation for future theoretical exploration and provide a useful tool for targeting influential users in online communities such as blogs, bulletin board systems, and forums.